Armory

Writing about the Armory Show comes with a caveat: people lie. Ask a dealer if they’ve made any sales, and they’ll often say “yes,” whether or not they’ve actually sold anything. Often, though, those tales reveal themselves. Some lies come with errors. This year, for example, a dealer told us collectors only buy at the end of a fair—an obviously false statement—but yes, she’d sold some small works. Other tales reveal themselves years later. Like when a dealer tells you he was “losing his shirt” at a past fair, forgetting that he’d told you that very same year that he’d sold out the booth.

Bad news for those planning to do anything other than look at art this week: Your week is fucked. It’s Armory Week, which for art professionals and lovers alike means a marathon of art-viewing practically guaranteed to hurt your eyes at some point. There’s treatment for these kinds of injuries, but the best advice we can offer is to simply be careful out there.

Ben Davis doesn’t want to write another piece about the poisonous art market, but he believes it’s his responsibility, so he’s doing it. We’re glad he did. He singles out the big three that are ruining art for everybody: unsustainable contradictions (often, artists making wink art about money) inequality, and terrible people. “…personally, I feel that art is too important to become PR for tycoons,” he writes, “no matter how much they want to pay to make it so.” Amen, brother. [ARTinfo]

That Davis quote reminds us of a Bob Nickas quote tweeted by Karen Archey over the weekend. “Wealthy and powerful people—and boring people, and famous people—use art and artists to legitimize themselves.” [VICE]

18 human heads found in box at the airport, only Gawker seems to notice that that’s weird. [Gawker]

Painting needs some categories in order to go anywhere, so writer Richard Kalina has made some. Basically, they are “mimetic” and “abstract.” [Brooklyn Rail]

Remember when the Armory show was a shocking event? Neither do we, but this WNYC episode describes how the art there once helped the plunge into “absolute chaos and nightmare.” [WNYC]

Erin Kissane does a good job of explaining why the Atlantic was wrong to run a sponsored article for Scientology. [Incisive.nu]

Facebook just announced the new “graph search” feature that answers Facebook-specific questions like “restaurants my friends have been to” and “photos I’ve liked.” [CBS]

Some of us felt bad for poking fun at the animated GIF version of the R.E.M. album cover. The guilt is waning now that it’s occurred to us how many other album covers would be just as deserving of lo-tech wow-factor [Deathandtaxesmag].

If you take away the VHS collection, the Joy Division posters, and the quarter-of-an-inch-thick plywood divider between by room and my flatmate’s, the Armory is going to look just like my apartment once Herzog and de Meuron are done renovating. [via NYT]

Word to the wise: watch the video for Beyoncé’s song “Countdown” before it gets removed or you think of something valuable to do.